Welcome to the Roving Rugrats blog!
This is a blog about travel and family, about roving the world with my three Rugrats, traveling and living abroad as expats with small children, a multicultural family with multicultural problems.
On the blog I share ridiculous stories from our voyages, tips inspired by a few things that have gone right and a lot of things that have gone wrong, reviews of places we’ve stayed and things we’ve done, musings on expat life and multicultural family dynamics, and the entertaining ravings of the Rugrats themselves.
This blog, like traveling with kids, is really all about snacks and chaos
Our story in a nutshell
The Roving
I was born in the United States, but lived in Taiwan as an expat from age two until I moved to the US for university when I was 18. I caught the travel bug early on. In my teens and twenties, I traveled, worked, and studied abroad in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. In 2008, I was living in New York when I met the Husband.
The Husband was born and raised in Ghana, and moved to the US when he was 13. Unlike me, he was perfectly content to settle down in New York and put down roots so deep that he thought he’d never leave. When we met, Ghana and the US were the only countries he’d been to, which blew my globetrotting mind!
All that was about to change. Less than six months after we started dating, I landed my dream job in the Netherlands, and I moved there in August 2009. He joined me two months later. We were married in Mexico in 2013.
The Rugrats
Then came the Rugrats. Rugrat#1 was born in 2014, followed by Rugrat#2 in 2016. Rugrat#3 arrived to complete our family in February 2020, less than a month before the world went into lockdown. With immediate family in Taiwan, Ghana, the US, and the UK, and friends who are like family all around the world, Rugrats#1 and 2 had multiple stamps in their passports within their first two months. Rugrat#3 got a later start because of the global pandemic, but we’re making up for lost time.
In October 2021, after twelve years of living in the Netherlands (longer than I have lived in my passport country!), we made the big move to Arusha, Tanzania. And that’s where this blog begins!
